There are known suspension apparatuses for vehicles, which include a damping force adjustable shock absorber equipped with a fail-safe mechanism (for example, refer to Patent Literature 1). According to such suspension apparatuses, starting an engine wile an ignition is in an ON state triggers a raise of a flag that permits a controller to control a damping force characteristic (hereinafter referred to as a control permission flag). Accordingly, the controller controls a control electric current for driving a solenoid valve of a damping force generation mechanism, so as to switch it from 0 ampere to, for example, a current value (0.3 ampere) positioned at a lowest current in normal control, which generates a damping force of a soft characteristic (S/S).